Douglas Todd: What makes love last?

Farideh Farid and Antonio Capobianco of West Vancouver got over an initial dislike of one another.Ric Ernst
/ Vancouver Sun

“Every good relationship needs one optimist and one comic.”

That’s the wry way Sarah White sums up the secret of the 30-year relationship she has with Tamara Adilman, the birth mother of their two sons.

In their attempts to nurture an abiding love, the Vancouver couple work on overcoming their differences. Sarah, for instance, is a witty introvert who revels in the outdoors while Tamara is an enthusiastic extrovert who prefers concerts to backpacking.

Indeed, before the couple’s trip this month to El Salvador, Sarah declared she was determined to hike with their young adult sons, Max and Ira, to the rim of an active Central American volcano.

But in a pre-travel interview in Vancouver, Tamara expressed hesitancy, saying, “I really want to do it because it would be good for us, but it really scares me. I’ll be working on it.”

Whether it’s coincidence or not, Sarah and Tamara will be sorting out their relationship’s volcano challenge on or around Valentine’s Day, which may make it an apt metaphor for the often eruptive annual festival of romantic love.

But how, once the emotional pressure surrounding Valentine’s Day winds down, can couples build a love that really lasts?

With Hollywood and retail advertisers spewing out images suggesting love is always exhilarating and sex-filled, it can be tough to find models for keeping alive a more peaceful long-term connection.

“We really work on our relationship. It’s like, if you don’t pay your bills, you lose your credit,” says Sarah, 54, a co-founder of Fairware, which sells sustainable merchandise throughout North America.

One problem that can arise at Valentine’s Day is high expectations for bursts of passion and intimacy.

Tamara, 55, has an especially sharp perspective on such relationship dynamics because she is a couples counsellor. She says she often sees partners who feel “let down” after Valentine’s Day.

“Some people think their partner has to meet all their needs, that it has to be their way on Valentine’s Day or throughout the year. But you’ve got to let stuff go,” she says.

Tamara — who notes that 47 per cent of Canadian marriages end in divorce — specializes in imago relationship therapy, which is one of the three main schools of couples therapy in North America.

A second is called emotionally focused therapy, co-founded by former University of B.C. psychology professor Sue Johnson, author of Hold Me Tight, who now heads the Ottawa Couple and Family Institute.

The third school, which stresses empirical research on relationships, was created by psychology professor emeritus John Gottman of the University of Washington.

Although each version of couples therapy has a differing emphasis, all are devoted to overcoming the real-life tensions and loneliness that can arise after the thrilling throes of romantic love turn into something else.

Even though Sarah and Tamara think of themselves as “growing up as minorities, in the sense of being gay, Jewish and having kids,” they began their relationship in the 1980s like most people — with a basic commitment. They promised they wouldn’t have extra-marital affairs and, that when times got tough and emotions became frayed or distant, they would not threaten to leave.

Along the road they have made sure their relationship has included lots of candlelight, time together without children, independence and, perhaps most important, authentic listening.

A central theory of imago relationship therapy, created by American author-therapist Harville Hendrix, is that people choose life partners who activate early memories of key figures in their lives.

The aim of imago therapy, therefore, is for couples to heal each other’s early wounds by developing relationship-building skills, particularly in structured dialogues that replace arguing with intentional active listening.

“A lot of people bicker,” Tamara said. “But imago therapy is about talking to each other like you love each other. It’s about really looking at each other, listening to each other and talking about feelings. It takes time to get there.”

In the week before Valentine’s Day, couples and family therapist Veronica Kallos-Lilly gave a public talk titled A Heart to Heart about Love, which explained another approach to building enduring relationships.

Sponsored by the B.C. Psychological Association to mark Psychology Month, Kallos-Lilly told her audience in Vancouver that scientists are now illustrating how love is basically “an attachment bond.”

Love, Kallos-Lilly says, is an expression of our basic need to connect with others for security, companionship and intimacy.

She says how research has shown a loving relationship can provide health benefits — including fewer visits to the doctor, lower risk of heart attacks, reduced blood pressure, less anxiety and depression, and lower use of drugs and alcohol.

“Distress often comes in a relationship when partners don’t feel close, when they feel insecure and they don’t know how to get a response from their partner,” Kallos-Lilly says in an interview.

Emotionally focused therapy, which is based on the attachment theory of the late British psychologist John Bowlby, encourages partners to be vulnerable by sharing their insecurities as gifts.

“A lot of people wonder: will you comfort me when I feel scared?” Kallos-Lilly says. As a result, some people show their pain by “getting loud and strident or complaining and controlling,” she says.

“The other response is to get quiet, shut down emotionally and retreat from your partner.”

By helping partners and family members express positive emotions, as well as acknowledge mistakes and regret, Kallos-Lilly says people can learn to build the bond that is love.

Antonio Capobianco and Farideh Farid agree they didn’t even like each other when they first met.

Even though they lived in Canada and had mutual friends, they came from different countries. His native language was Italian, hers was Farsi, from Iran. He felt she was too reserved and “sniffy.” She found him too loud.

But, in the mid-1990s, after Farideh had been long divorced and Antonio’s wife had died, the two slowly began to make a connection. Struck by Farideh’s elegance, Antonio sent her flowers.

The only way they could communicate with each other in the beginning, however, was in a third language: German. It was far from ideal for sharing intimate thoughts and feelings.

They don’t exactly know how they mysteriously made it to the next, solid stage of their relationship.

“Maybe it sounds like a paradox, but what keeps us together is our diversity,” says Antonio, 74, a retired Italian diplomat who has served in consulates around the world, including Vancouver.

Antonio and Farida believe their frankness is crucial to their relationship. The most important thing for creating the love is the honesty — not holding anything from each other,” says Farideh, 76, a visual artist.

The two come across in conversation as highly open and equal, with neither dominating, even while they often expressed lively disagreements on many topics.

They explained how Antonio travels to Italy without Farideh for big parts of the year. Antonio also plays piano and accordion in their stylish West Vancouver apartment tower, but Farideh finds it loud and prefers he do so when she’s not home.

And while Antonio really likes Farideh’s four adult children, he often finds it disconcerting when his wife “talks 10 times a day” on the phone to them.

But it all seems to work.

“We’re not glued to each other. We live our lives with mutual respect. We spend a lot of time together, but we also leave each other to be free,” Farideh says.

And every night they’re both home, they sit down for a shared dinner; both love cooking. Later they play cards, an Italian game called buraco.

Even though Antonio says Farideh can be “stubborn,” he has no hesitation in declaring: “I like her. I love her. She’s very beautiful. We support each other.”

Responds Farideh: “He has a very good character. He’s not grumpy. He’s fun and happy.”

With a laugh, Antonio adds: “At our age, we also still have a strong physical attraction.”

Farideh and Antonio have found ways to stay bonded in the midst of their differences.

Kallos-Lilly, founding director of the Vancouver Couple and Family Institute, thinks some personality conflicts may be almost irreconcilable.

But Kallos-Lilly, who is married with children, generally believes most couples can find ways to shift from being “threatened” by their partner’s personal differences to being “curious” about them.

Whether a couple hail from disparate countries, is heterosexual or homosexual, Kallos-Lilly is convinced that, when it comes to the art and science of building a loving relationship, “we’re more similar than different.”

To that end, both Kallos-Lilly and Tamara Adilman think it’s not a bad idea to have a festival like Valentine’s Day, devoted to love. But neither believes the event needs to be filled with grand gestures.

Somewhat like Christmas, which also celebrates togetherness, the veteran couples therapists would like to see the spirit of Valentine’s Day spread throughout the year, leading to love with longevity.

For more information: The Vancouver Couple and Family Institute holds a “Hold Me Tight” couples workshop on March 5 and April 2. Imago Vancouver holds a “Getting the Love You Want” workshop from March 4-6.

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